Technique Needed

[Ken Kovak]

I have what is otherwise a very nice image of a White Ibis except for the fact that there is a bright branch in the dark background intersecting the Ibis' bill. That branch is very distracting. I can use the APTATS quick mask method to remove the majority of the offending branch but am having difficulty separating the bill from the branch. Can anyone point me to a technique or a tutorial on how best to accomplish this?

Thanks in advance,
Ken

[Daniel Cadieux]

Hi Ken, it would be difficult to advise on which technique to use without seeing the image in question...

[Dan Brown]

Yes, seeing the image would help. But, as I imagine the problem, what I would suggest is using the QM, make the patch as per the APTATS, with the brush hardness set at 0%. But, before leaving QM mode, switch to an eraser brush, set the hardness to 100% AND ERASE THE EDGE OF THE RED MASK WITH THIS BRUSH to conform with the line of the bill. Now when you move the patch into place, if you have matched the edge angle nicely, you will have solved your problem.

[Charles Glatzer]

Use the quick selection tool to select the offending branch, then use the clone tool with blending mode set to darken. You may get away with just the clone tool and blend mode change, as using the dark blend mode will only effect the lighter tones.

Chas

[denise ippolito]

Ken, If you are working on a layer add a mask to that layer after you clone so that you can reveal any parts of the bird you may have accidentally cloned over. I have a tutorial with step by step instructions. Shoot me an email and I can send you the very short PDF.

[Tom Graham]

Many times it helps to work on a larger image size. Try doubling the image size and working in close to the pixel size level. May be tedious. But if this looks good it will look even better when you downsize back down.
Tom

[Ken Kovak]

Folks, Thanks for the input. In the end I was able to do a pretty good job with the branch removal using the Quick Mask technique. What I was missing was the step of erasing anything that encroached on the bill with a hard edge brush.

Ken

[Ed Cordes]

When I use Quick Mask I often turn down the opacity of the layer I am erasing so I can see the parts of the image I need to preserve. Then after doing the erasing I need to do I turn the opacity back up prior to merging the layers.